FARGO—The owners of a CrossFit gym here have a thing for old warehouses, but it's for a reason.

Co-owner and Head Coach Sara Mozingo and business partner Courtney Shoemaker opened CrossFit Icehouse in March 2015 at 508 Oak St. N., starting in about 1,000 square feet of a building that had been used for storage. The business grew to about 2,500 square feet total there.

But Mozingo said they were ready for more, and the gym moved in March into its newly renovated 8,000-square-foot space in the former Smith Inc. building, 1620 1st Ave. N.

So, why another old warehouse? Floorspace.

"That's the biggest thing," Mozingo said. "We don't use machines or any kind of really bulky equipment, so basically we just need floorspace."

Other than more than tripling in size, she said the relocation gives CrossFit Icehouse a more visible presence along a busy street and more opportunities to continue to grow the business.

Community fitness

Mozingo has the CrossFit website's definition of the fitness regimen memorized: Constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity.

But it's really about "community," she said.

"The thing that makes CrossFit the most successful is the people that come to the gym," she said. "They're doing movements that you do in everyday life, so we're squatting, we're dead lifting, we're pressing."

People like it because those movements are combined in a constantly changing order, she said. Mozingo said it's also fun that everyone in a class does the same movement together, though it can vary in intensity based on individual fitness level.

"It's more comparable to personal training because you're going to have a coach that's teaching you how to move," she said.

CrossFit Icehouse's bigger space means the gym now has room for 18 members per class. It also gave them space for a dedicated yoga room, as well as two now-vacant bays upstairs that Mozingo hopes can be used by a massage therapist and a chiropractor eventually.

A CrossFit gym like this tends to be the polar opposite of modern fitness centers, loaded with high-tech equipment and screens that show calorie counts. Instead of digital boards and big pieces of equipment, members here use pullup bars, barbells or just their own body weight during a workout.

She said she likes to try to make CrossFit less intimidating to people who have never tried it, and coaches at the gym aim to take care of members at their own level.

Monthly memberships start at $150, and Mozingo said the gym now has about 130 members. But she prefers to call them athletes.

"I think everybody should have the chance to feel what it feels like to be an athlete," she said. "When you're in here, you're doing things that athletes do."

Business profile

What: CrossFit Icehouse

Where: 1630 1st Ave. N., Fargo

Hours: Classes are held throughout the day on weekdays, with open gym and other events on weekends

Ryan Johnson has been a Forum reporter since 2012 and previously wrote for the Grand Forks Herald.

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